


A Rush Of Blood To The Head (The Beside Me, Baby Remix)

by Rubynye



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M, Genderswap, Knifeplay, Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-01
Updated: 2010-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pavel wants answers; Hikari explains a thing or three.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Rush Of Blood To The Head (The Beside Me, Baby Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [echoinautumn (maybetwice)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Rush of Blood To The Head](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/576) by Echoinautumn. 



"Well, you're quiet." Standing at the foot of her regulation bed, Hikari surveys the pale, sweat-sheened boy sprawled before her, his boots lined up on the floor in neat contrast to his disheveled uniform and disarranged curls.

Pavel doesn't respond with either word or gesture, but Hikari can see his eyes flicker beneath thin, pain-purpled lids. She sits beside him, trailing her fingers across his damp forehead until one side of his chapped pink mouth curls up. "I do not need words," he says, voice raspy. "I am doing calculations."

"No you're not." Pavel scowls at the contradiction, grabbing for Hikari's wrist, but his nerves, still clogged with the remnants of agony, hesitate before obeying him just as he hesitated before charting Kirk's demanded course. It's the slightest gesture to jerk her hand out of reach; Pavel tries to give chase, gritting his teeth as he heaves up onto one elbow, his normal grace weighed down by lingering pain, and it feels like she has all the time in the galaxy to reach across for the dagger at her hip, spin its filigreed hilt in her palm and lay its edge across his wrist.

Hikari uses only that dagger on Pavel. It's the one he gave her.

He clenches his fist, visibly shaking, his nose scrunched cutely by his frown, but if she told him so he'd hear it as a taunt so she keeps it in her chest. There are times for taunts, and then there's now, as Pavel sinks back down onto Hikari's pillows, eyelashes shivering on his sharp cheekbones, and mutters, "You are no telepath. My thoughts are my own."

Hikari just laughs at him, shifting her knee over his near forearm, pressing his far wrist down lightly with the flat of her blade. Leaning across him like this exposes her side, so she watches the tremors ripple down his thighs, violent enough to show through his uniform trousers, and knows she doesn't have to worry about a knee in her ribs. But then, Hikari doesn't have to worry about Pavel, even if she does have to remind him so from time to time. "You think about math with your eyes open," she tells him as she leans down, tilting the blade against the heel of his hand, a heartbeat from slicing it open. "Eyes twinkling like those northern stars of yours." She brushes her lips over his clammy forehead, between his scowling eyebrows. "You close your eyes when you don't want me to know what you're thinking, Chekov. But I always know."

Pavel shudders under Hikari's mouth, his rumble curling warmly in her belly and dampening her thighs, but there's time for that later when he's actually recovered from the Booth. "Then tell me my thought, Sulu," he growls, and she smiles against his skin.

First, though, Hikari slides off the bed, watching Pavel's chest heave deeply, his fingers twitch as if she'd manacled him down. She walks backwards towards her console as he opens his eyes to slits, smoky jade gleaming from between his meshed eyelashes, and her smile now is pure fond weakness. Her boy is so beautiful.

He's also still angry, so Hikari doesn't take her eyes off him as she reaches to activate the program she set up earlier. It should entertain Kirk or whomever checks this bug, with its simulated auditory pornography; while Pavel was in Detention she searched her quarters for the latest surveillance, disabled the other bug but wired this one into her program, and still made it back before Kirk could have the chance to gloatingly summon her to watch Pavel's session in the Booth. Which she did, every last excruciating second of it.

As she returns to her boy on her bed, Hikari wonders if McCoy watched Kirk in the Agony Booth at the Academy. Dr. McCoy doesn't like agonizers, Hikari discovered one late night over a bottle of smoky alcohol; Leonora thinks punishment should be inflicted with knives and burns and blows, "something real so it counts," and she finds nerve damage "a bitch" to have to treat, which is amusing all on its own. Hikari likes McCoy a bit, which is rather a pity, she thinks as she curls around Pavel's head, as despite his annoyance he drops his hands palm-up beside his shoulders. But what must be must be.

Meanwhile, she has a question to answer. "You think I threw away our moment," Hikari says, sinking her fingers into Pavel's salt-damp curls. "And you want to know why." Pavel doesn't deign to nod, his eyes closed again, but even through his eyelids she can see that eloquent eyeroll. "Today's session must've rattled your devious brain."

Pavel twists his pink mouth into a smirk. "Unless I have missed my count, it is not that time of the month, so why--" Hikari grips his chin tightly, but he forces out the rest of his impertinence "-- are you so bloodless?"

She swings her dagger down, point poised to open his jugular; his hands close around her wrists, slower than normal, and even at his full strength he couldn't stop her from this close. "Watch it," she says mildly, sweeping her blade back and forth in a little stroke, the tip just dragging against his fine pale skin. "Honestly, did you leave your wits on the floor of the Agony Booth? When the Empress gathers her majestic self up to inquire, do you want to be the XO of the ship that just vaporized Headquarters?"

Pavel tilts his head towards Hikari's dagger hand, not away, forcing her to modulate the pressure carefully, daring her to cut him. "With the Captain and Spock in hand to exchange for her mercy--"

So she does, a shallow slice, and he stops on a hiss, pressing his long fingers to the red line flaring up the tendon of his throat. "Mercy? What Empire do you live in? Chekov, listen to me." Hikari wipes the dagger on her sheet, sheathes it and presses her hand over his; Pavel raises his eyelids like it hurts, which it must, finally looking up at her with those wide green-smoke eyes. "Let Kirk lead us through the aftershocks of this little rescue expedition, he's welcome to the glory and the blame. We'll just fly, and run Security, and watch. If worst comes to Imperially furious worst, and we're not dead anyway, we can always deliver him to her Exaltedness then, and if this black eye inspires her to negotiate with Kirk instead we can ride the _Enterprise_ as he pushes her to the apex of the Empire, then take the ship from beneath him. Either way, right now it's best to wait."

Pavel looks at Hikari a heartbeat more before his smile starts to spread; he looks so young like this, so sweet but for the polished glint in his eyes, so that's what she focuses on as she smiles in return. There are still soft places inside her that tremble when she looks at him, and sometimes she worries that it shows.

Sometimes she almost doesn't care. Pavel grins, and she grins back, knowing he sees what she sees, even though he says, "Even so, to let him recover Dr. McCoy was a mistake. He was wounded and weak without her."

Hikari had thought on that herself, while she chose the Security squad to dispatch for the mission. There are people who would consider going from being a Captain's pet doctor to an Admiral's as a promotion. But she shakes her head, lifting her hand from Pavel's as she reaches under her bed for supplies. "Like a hurt animal, and so dangerous like one. But that's beside the point, really. That's not what you're wondering."

"I am wondering on your plan to handle Spock," Pavel counters, and it's Hikari's turn to roll her eyes. They like to debate that one sometimes after sex, or in the Botany lab, where the ventilation system messes effectively with auditory surveillance and hiding one's face is just a matter of sightlines. Pavel is disappointed in her suggestions of poisons, because he longs to see her drenched in green blood; he loves her for her romantic, bloodthirsty side, but when putting down Vulcans the Empire has learned the value of practicality, and Hikari studies her history.

So she says, "No, you're not," for the second time tonight, as she pulls out gauze and ointment. "If someone took me away you'd come for me," she tells Pavel as she pushes his hand off his neck and wipes ointment down the scratch she gave him, pressing its edges shut. "And I would come for you."

"Perhaps I would not." Pavel squares his shoulders against the mattress, as if his eyes aren't shining until he shuts them. "Perhaps I should go from Ensign to Captain on my own." Hikari snorts, wrapping gauze around his neck. "Why not?"

Hikari wipes her hands with a last shred of gauze, shifting onto her knees above Pavel's head. "Because you're mine, Pavel Andreievich." When she sets her hand on his cheek he flicks a glance up at her, his pupils widening before he closes his eyes again. "When I rise from Lieutenant to Captain I'll have you beside me, all the way."

Even as he growls under Hikari's fingers, Pavel turns his head into her touch, and kisses the lifeline across the palm of her hand.


End file.
